Apparently, mice in the NYC area are not a rabies risk.

[conuly]

There is, however, a risk of lockjaw if you got bitten by one. Or, perhaps, prodded one with a too-short stick to see if it was actually dead.... Yeah, not one of my brighter moments. And this was outside, too - there was really no reason for me not to be minding my own business. Stupid mouse seems to have a broken foot, to my untrained eye, which explains why it was still in the place I'd flung it long enough for me to stick it in a coffee can, chuck some french fries after it. If it starts frothing at the mouth or anything, or *I* do, I'll get somebody to kill it properly and check out its brains. But I'm pretty sure that, like the other mice in the area, it's not a rabies risk.

And unless somebody in the area is desperate to make a wild mouse with a broken foot (but probably not rabies!) a pet, I guarantee, I don't care enough to keep it alive. Thing *bit* me! (Mind, it was scared, but that's not the point)

Comments

[xiggaroo.livejournal.com]

Maybe the french fries plus the cardiac strain of (what he thought was) avoiding death caused his heart to give out?

If he's alive still, though, sticking him in a freezer is one of the most horrible ways you can kill an animal. Freezing to death is slow and excruciatingly painful.

[conuly]

You think so? I'd heard it was fairly pain-free, that's why I thought of it.

[xiggaroo.livejournal.com]

No, not for warm blooded animals.

FREEZING

Hypothermia is neither short nor painless. Some time ago on the rats list, Brian Lee detailed an experience in which he almost died from exposure. He went through it step by step for us so we could all understand how inhumane this method truly is. Yes, in the end, a person or animal who has died from exposure appears to have died peacefully, but the steps leading up to that death, as described by Brian, are horrendously painful.

Think about how your bare hands begin to feel in the winter before they go numb. It is pretty painful. Imagine how you would feel if someone you knew, loved and trusted put you in a giant freezer, turned out the light, locked the door and went away. Imagine how terrified you would feel! What an agonizing and lengthy way to die. It is not my idea of humane, and that is exactly what your beloved pet would experience. Who could live with their conscience after using this method?

http://www.rmca.org/Articles/euthanasia.htm

[conuly]

Ouch. Got it. Well, it was well-meant, anyway.